


Don't Tell Your Dad (Or: Four Times Miles Kept a Secret and One Time He Didn't Have To)

by the_wordbutler



Series: Motion Practice [22]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Legal Drama, M/M, motion practice universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 16:04:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1353427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony’s not the best at crisis management.</p>
<p>Miles learns this the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Tell Your Dad (Or: Four Times Miles Kept a Secret and One Time He Didn't Have To)

**Author's Note:**

> Written in honor of Miles’s birthday, which in the MPU is March 22. I can’t resist celebrating things like this, because I’m slightly nuts. Spoilers for "Permanency" and "In re the Adoption of Miles Morales," but only just.
> 
> I did not send this to my wonderful beta-readers because I wanted it up with immediacy, so all mistakes are my own.

**One.**

The kitchen is literally on fire. Not all of it, but definitely one entire stove burner. The smoke detector is blaring, the dogs are howling, and Tony mostly looks like a wild man from the woods. His sleeves are rolled up, his hair is all disheveled, and he beats the burner with a dish towel while swearing.

“I think you’re supposed to use a fire extinguisher,” Miles says, because he’s not sure what good the dish towel and swearing is doing.

“I don’t own a fire extinguisher!” Tony yells. The dish towel lights up, too, and wow, Miles really wishes he’d just gone to Ganke’s after school.

“It’s under the sink!” he yells back.

“What?”

“Bruce told me it’s under the sink!” Miles yells again. Tony twists, and they stare at each other for a minute—maybe that’s what Bruce meant by Tony’s lack of self-preservation, the fact he stops and stares when the kitchen is literally on fire. Either way, Tony ends up dropping the towel into the frying pan, finding the fire extinguisher, and coating the kitchen in that white foam stuff.

The smoke detector finally stops beeping. The dogs both cower under the breakfast nook. Miles stands in the doorway and Tony in the middle of the kitchen. Both of them stare at the disaster.

“Don’t tell your dad,” Tony says, breathless, and wipes his forehead on his forearm.

Miles considers pointing out that they haven’t even adopted him yet, but Tony looks a little too freaked out to deal with that right now.

And that’s how it starts.

 

**Two.**

“Don’t tell your dad,” Tony declares, and slams the front door behind him.

Miles groans and flops down across the living room couch. Bruce is participating in some big event at the law school this weekend, and for some reason, his absence amps Tony up from normal-crazy to big-time-crazy. Miles thinks sometimes Tony isn’t sure how to be normal without Bruce there. He’s unpredictable and extra-weird, and Miles feels jumpier for it.

Of course, that could also be because they’re babysitting Dot today, and Dot is totally covered in permanent marker. Miles wonders why Tony didn’t say _don’t tell Dot’s dad_ , because Steve might actually kill him for this.

Dot looks at her marker-covered arms. “Am I in trouble?”

“Probably,” Miles answers. She nods a little and leans against the couch. “What do you want to do while he’s gone?”

“Where’s Uncle Bruce?” 

“Working.”

“Then who’s in charge?”

She rests her chin on the arm of the couch when she asks, and Miles realizes about a half-second later that he can’t actually answer. He props himself up on his elbows, considering, and then shrugs it off. “I guess I am.”

Dot narrows her eyes. “You’re a kid.”

“I’m a teenager,” he retorts, because he turned thirteen last month.

She hardly blinks. “You can’t drive or do any grown-up things. You’re a kid.”

“Well, somebody has to be in charge.” Dot keeps staring, totally unconvinced, and Miles drops back down onto the couch. “If you don’t want to play, that’s fine, but you’re _not_ going to—”

“We can play the wrestle game,” she interrupts, and Miles twists to glance at her again. She’s got her hands on her hips and her shoulders are squared. All of a sudden, Miles thinks how bad fights with her and her parents must be. “My daddies play it. It’s easy.”

He frowns. “Your dads wrestle with you?”

“No, but they said there’s wrestle game that grown-ups and sometimes big kids play.” She pauses and tilts her head to one side. “One daddy said big kids, then my other daddy said not big kids, just grown-ups, and they made bad faces at each other.”

Miles sighs. “Dot, why don’t we just—”

He’s not sure what he wants to suggest—a game, a movie, coloring with crayons instead of Sharpies, maybe playing outside with the dogs—but every idea rushes out of his head when he glances in the direction of a rustling sound and catches Dot stripping out of her clothes. He stares at her for a second, her t-shirt gone and her skirt halfway down her legs, before he squeaks, “Dot!”

She jerks her head up, her knees caught in the elastic. “But you said—”

“I never said anything!” Miles protests. She stares at him like he’s speaking in a whole different language, and he only realizes that he’s jumped up and grabbed her shirt off the floor after he thrusts it at her. “No games where you have to be naked, okay?”

“You can take off your clothes, too, and—”

“No, Dot!” he repeats, and she sulks as she snatches her shirt away.

Hours later, Tony laughs so hard that he almost cries. “The fact a Rogers-Barnes sex euphemism almost landed you with a naked four-year-old— I just can’t,” he wheezes, and leans against the wall.

Miles scowls at him. “Just don’t tell Dad, okay?” he says, and Tony waves him off to keep laughing.

 

**Three.**

“Okay, wait, no, cover your eyes,” Tony warns, and he scrabbles to try to shove an arm in front of Miles’s face.

Miles laughs and smacks at him a little—lightly, like he does every time Tony turns all touchy-feely—but Tony’s really devoted to shielding him from the TV. There’s a guy yelling at some mostly-naked girls in a room full of fruit, and—

_Oh._

Miles feels a flash of warmth race through his whole body.

“You know, on second thought, _Game of Thrones_ is maybe about three years ahead of you,” Tony says. He grabs the remote and switches back to cable just as the darker-skinned girl starts really writhing around on the couch. “We can try another shower, maybe something on basic cable, PG-rated at worst so that you don’t—”

“But it’s a cool show!” Miles protests. Tony glances over at him, and he shifts around on the couch. “Not just because of the sex scenes—”

“Are you sure? Because you’re thirteen and it’s a show full of half-naked ladies, which makes me think that maybe it’s the sexy bits you like.”

Miles rolls his eyes. “Nobody normal likes watching shows with sex scenes in the same room as their parents,” he points out. Tony pauses, then shrugs a little. “We can fast-forward through the naked parts and just watch the fighting and the politics.”

“And if we miss a plot point?” Tony asks.

“You’ve seen it before _and_ read the books. You can tell me what we skipped.” 

Tony stares him down, his eyebrows raised and his lips pursed, before he finally flips back to the Blu-ray player.

It’s not until the next episode that he says, “Don’t tell your dad about this, by the way.”

Miles cringes a little as the blonde girl bites into the horse heart like she’s starving. “Yeah,” he agrees, and— Oh, gross.

 

**Four.**

“You know, I think I’ve met your captain,” Tony says. He leans his elbow out the open car window, his smile broad and totally fake. “Tall guy, serious face, goatee? Last name sounds like Johnson? Johns _t_ on? Johan—” 

“I still need your proof of insurance, Mister Stark,” the police officer says, staring at Tony over the tops of her sunglasses. “Otherwise, I’ll have to ticket you for that, too.”

“Too? As in you’re already giving me a ticket?”

“Too,” the officer repeats, and Tony’s fake smile disappears all at once.

It’s the middle of August and the very first week back to school, and Miles thumps his head against the window as a school bus races past them. Bruce’d left early to prepare for a big hearing, leaving the two of them alone in the house—and leaving them to be late, because that’s what Tony’s best at. He’s got toast crumbs on his tie as he digs around in the Audi’s glove compartment, muttering under his breath.

“You should have just taken the Prius,” Miles points out. Tony snaps his head up, and Miles shrugs. “Bruce keeps everything in a little folder. You would have found it by now.”

“Bruce is an organizational nightmare in nine-tenths of his life—including in our bathroom, by the way.” For some weird reason, he glances at the police officer when he says this, like he’s proving a point. “I therefore refuse to believe that he’d know where any of our insurance cards are.”

“He knew where all the health insurance stuff was,” Miles reminds him.

Tony shoots him a look that’s almost kind of mean. He’s also sweating around his hairline, because the car’s hot and the air conditioner’s off. “New rule: no talking when your parent’s about to get a ticket.”

“Do you have your proof of insurance?” the officer asks.

“Make that two tickets,” Tony corrects, and slams the glove compartment shut.

Twenty minutes later, the school looks mostly like a ghost town, and Tony stops the car in the drop-off lane before he touches Miles’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for getting, you know, snappy,” he says when Miles looks over at him. He’s frowning, and even though his eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses, Miles is pretty sure he means it. “I haven’t gotten a ticket in a really, _really_ long time, it kind of threw me for a loop, and I—”

“You were driving fifty in a thirty-five,” Miles points out.

“I didn’t say I didn’t deserve it, I said it threw me for a loop,” Tony immediately replies, and Miles snorts a little at him. He keeps his hand on Miles’s shoulder for a second longer. “We’re okay, though, right?”

Miles rolls his eyes. “Like that’s the first time you’ve ever been weird,” he says, and Tony grins as he unlocks the doors.

He’s halfway up the steps when Tony calls, “Hey, Miles!” through the open passenger-side window. He almost loses his balance as he turns around. “Don’t tell your dad, okay?”

“You’re going to start owing me!” Miles shouts back, and Tony laughs and beeps twice before speeding out of the parking lot.

 

**Five.**

“You at least could have e-mailed me, Tony!” Bruce snaps, and Miles presses a little further into the corner of the breakfast nook.

His parents don’t fight a lot—they bicker and snark, sure, but fighting’s a couple steps above snide comments and rolled eyes—but when they do, it usually involves yelling. He can hear Bruce pacing around in the living room, frustrated like an animal in a too-small cage; under the table, Dummy noses Miles’s leg to prove that it’s freaking him out. Miles scratches him behind the ears and tries not to listen too closely.

“I didn’t know I needed your express permission for parenting time,” Tony replies after a couple seconds, his voice all smooth and emotionless, “but if that’s the case, then—”

“You took him out of school for the entire day,” Bruce cuts in sharply. “I scheduled his dentist appointment first thing in the morning so he wouldn’t miss that test, but then you— What, swept in and took him to a double feature?”

“Lunch and a single feature, not that I think you’re in the mood for me to correct you right now.” Bruce snorts loud enough that Miles can hear him. “But for the record, I didn’t know he had a test when I picked him up. That was news to me.”

“You didn’t know because you didn’t _need_ to know,” Bruce retorts. He sounds precise, like every word’s a lesson in control, and Miles braces for when he snaps and really shouts. “You had one job, Tony. That’s it. The fact that he had a test was immaterial to—”

“You’re right, the fun dad should never know about anything serious, he’s just around for video games, ice cream, and the occasional gig as the family chauffer!” 

The words echo off the high ceiling, and Miles twists around to look out at the part of the living room he can see from where he’s sitting. Tony’s standing in the middle of the floor, his hands raised up high, but he drops them as he crosses over to Bruce—and disappears from view. 

“You realize that’s how it feels sometimes, right?” he asks. “I’m the fun dad, the no-worries dad, and then you’re the one with all the answers and solutions and the shoulder to cry on. It—” He falls quiet for a second. “I mean, yeah, okay, I play into that. But I kind of also want to be somebody he can ask for help with stuff other than his math homework.”

Bruce sighs. “Tony—”

“I thought dragging him out for the day, just me and him, it’d help build some of that. Put me in the running to be the problem-solving, advice-giving, heart-to-heart dad. I had no clue about the test until he told me. _After_ the movie, by the way, so that’s a tiny bit his fault.”

Bruce releases a noise that’s almost like a laugh. “You’re holding him responsible for his own delinquency?”

“Not totally responsible,” Tony replies, his voice starting to warm up. “Maybe twelve percent responsible.”

“That’s suspiciously specific.”

“Former engineer, remember? All about the specificity,” Tony returns, and in the silence that follows, Miles hears at least three weird, breathy sighs that means they’re kissing.

He waits until the noises disappear before he yells, “Please don’t make out when I’m in the next room!”

Bruce chuckles like he’s maybe embarrassed, but Tony just plain _laughs_. “I’m going to kiss you again,” he loudly informs Bruce, “but please, don’t tell our kid.”

“Oh, I won’t,” Bruce promises, and Miles grins even when he groans.

**Author's Note:**

> The newest MPU posting schedule can be found [here](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/80286374741/the-latest-and-greatest-posting-schedule-please).


End file.
